Internet suspended in Aligarh after clashes between police, protesters

Police fired tear gas shells to disperse a crowd of anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protesters after incidents of arson and stone-pelting in the old city area of Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh on Sunday (February 23) afternoon. Subsequently, internet was suspended in the city till Sunday midnight.

Incidents of vandalism of property and stone-pelting at security personnel were reported from upper Kot area of the Kotwali police station, said police sources. They said some people were injured during the clashes but the exact number of those injured is yet to be ascertained.

Reports of brick-batting and arson were still coming in from a spot where some women protesters were holding a dharna since Saturday on the Mohamed Ali Road leading to the Kotwali police station with police trying to evict the protesters from there, they said.

Related news: Stone-pelting near CAA protest site in Jaffrabad, police fire tear gas

The clashes broke out shortly after a Bhim Army-led march by hundreds of anti-CAA protesters heading to the district collectorate earlier was stopped midway by police and Rapid Action Force jawans.

Stopped by police, the protesters, however, had headed towards the Eidgah area in the city where another group of anti-CAA women protesters had been holding an indefinite dharna for the past three weeks.

As the Bhim Army-led protestes, including women, were stopped by police from moving ahead after they crossed over the Katpula Bridge from the old city, they decided to join the women protesters sitting in Eidgah area.

Related news: Anti-CAA protesters block Delhi road, Jaffrabad metro shut

The protesters had taken out the march on a call by Bhim Army chief Chandra Shekhar. Shops in some areas near Kotwali had downed their shutters.

Aligarh SSP Rajmuni, who took over the charge as the district police only last night, had earlier told reporters that following the abortive march, an FIR has been lodged against three persons at the Delhi Gate police station for trying to violate prohibitory orders and breach peace in the city.

The new SSP said he was monitoring the situation arising out of the anti-CAA protests, going on both at the AMU and the old city area.

He had said our “channels of communications with protesters are going to remain open but it does not mean we will allow anybody disturb the city’s law and order”.

(With inputs from agencies)